Chinese Chinese Language

Mandarin Promotion Council Wikipedia

The Mandarin Promotion Council (國語推行委員會, pinyin: Gu?yǔ Tuīx?ng Wěiyuanhu?) was established by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China with the purpose of standardizing and popularizing the usage of Guoyu in China.

It was created as the Preparatory Commission for the Unification of the National Language (國語統一籌備會, Gu?yǔ Tǒngyī Ch?ub?i Hu?) by the Republic (then still based in Nanjing) on April 21, 1919. On December 12, 1928, the Commission was renamed to the Preparatory Committee for the Unification of the National Language (國語統一籌備委員會, Gu?yǔ Tǒngyī Ch?ub?i Wěiyuanhu?), headed by Woo Tsin-hang and had 31 members. The Committee was revived in 1983 as the Mandarin Promotion Council based on Taiwan.

The decisions reached by the Council include:

• Changing the first- and second-grade textbook titles from Guowen (國文 "National Script") to Guoyu (國語 "National language"), on January 24, 1920

• Publishing the Guoyin Zidian (國音字典 "National Pronunciation Dictionary") edited by Woo Tsin-hang, on December 24, 1920. The Guoyin Zidian later became the Guoyu Cidian (國語辭典), a comprehensive on-line and CD-ROM Traditional Chinese Mandarin dictionary.

The Committee for National Language Romanization (羅馬字母拼音研究委員會) under the Council selects and modifies Romanizations. The choices were:

• Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928)

• MPS II (1986)

• Tongyong Pinyin (2000)

Other projects include:

• Researching Mainland Chinese Mandarin usages

• Researching Taiwanese aborigine|aboriginal Taiwanese languages, Hakka Chinese, and Taiwanese (linguistics)|Taiwanese

Last Modified:   2005-04-13